Epilogue
“Okay, what do you think about that?” Didion asks, stepping aside so Audra can see her reflection.
“Good.” Audra plays with her headband and readjusts it on her own terms. “Better.”
Nora comes to the doorway in her black unitard. “Audra, come on, Aunt Sammie wants to take our picture before we go trick-or-treating, come on, come on.” She bounces from foot to foot and holds her flapping hand out for Audra to take.
Didion nods at her daughter when she looks back for approval. “You’re ready.”
She beams, her sage-green eyes glinting, her wild mane of red hair an unbrushable mess. It’s long for a four-year-old, as she, like her Aunt Sammie when she was young, will not let anyone with a pair of scissors anywhere close to it.
It got a little mullet-y at one point, and Didion and Austin trimmed it while she was asleep, figuring she’d never notice. But of course, they should know their sharp little daughter better. She notices everything.
Didion follows the hyper girls down the stairs to Sammie, who is standing in the living room with a film camera, waving them in. “Hurry up, you two! I’m seconds from peeing myself, let’s go.”
Sammie is dressed like Cinderella, and is nine months pregnant—due to burst at any second. The sight of a pregnant Disney princess is truly hilarious, and she has begged the ancestors to let her have the baby already about a hundred times in the last few weeks.
In the kitchen, Harrison and Austin are keeping an eye on Didion’s meal, like she asked. Keeping an eye, in this case, means drinking beer and making sure the chili doesn’t burn. Seeing her come into the kitchen, Harrison lifts the lid of the sauce to show he is doing his promised duty.
Didion laughs and turns the stove down. “You are released.”
“Harrison!” Sammie calls. “Can you come take our picture?”
Taylor Rae is there, wrangling the kids. She’s used to this kind of chaos.
Harrison goes off, leaving Austin and Didion alone in the kitchen. It’s strewn with spices not yet put away and cooking utensils not yet washed, but it glows warmly with the candlelight and orange Christmas lights on the porch.
Austin takes his wife by the waist and kisses her. “Hey.”
She smiles up at him. “Hey. You look cute.”
“You do too.” He takes her hand in the air like they’re dancing and lets her step away to show him the final product. At their daughter’s request, they are dressed as a cowboy and cowgirl. No one is sure why, as it is completely unrelated to her fairy costume.
“Thank you very much,” Didion says, stepping back in and allowing him to put his arms around her.
“You think she’s gonna have that baby tonight?” he asks, motioning into the other room.
“Could be.” She looks at her sister, whose hand is pressed up against her poor, tired back.
“I think she’s ready to go. And it’s Halloween. It just seems right. I think it’s a Halloween baby.”
She grins at him. “You’ve gotten so mystical lately.”
“Blame it on Audra.”
To say Audra was a surprise would be an understatement.
Five years ago, after Babe’s funeral, they stayed a few extra days at Birdsong before returning to their real lives.
In that time, they all made plans for the future.
Matt workshopped what he’d say to Beau when he got home.
Sammie sheepishly asked if it was okay with everyone if she stayed at Birdsong for a while—the answer was, of course, yes.
Didion reluctantly opened her work texts.
Austin, who had a tennis clinic in Montreal, asked if she’d come with him.
Didion pretended to think about it, but fooled none of them.
On that Tuesday, she got on a plane and went back to New York to a now completely foreign life.
She told the team at Baccarat she was leaving and managed not to cave when they seemed genuinely sad to see her go.
Item by item, she took her things out of her apartment and put them on the street—almost everything gone between trips up the stairs, as Manhattan streets are like the Bermuda Triangle.
On her last night, there was nothing but a mattress on the floor.
Matt left Beau, who put up no fight—which both relieved and secretly offended Matt.
On Didion’s last night in Manhattan, Matt slept over, and the two of them put on a playlist of throwbacks and ordered the city’s best Chinese food and drank wine on the fire escape.
The summer night in the city was the very best Didion had ever had.
Maybe it wasn’t New York she hated so much, she thought, as being alone in New York.
The next day, Matt and Nora drove down to Mercy to stay at Birdsong with Sammie, and Didion got on the train to Montreal to meet Austin.
A few weeks later, Didion found out she was pregnant.
And listen, Didion and Austin were hardly chaste—any touch between them was likely to turn into something more.
But they were careful. It was only the one time they weren’t—that one night on the beach, during the long, long weekend.
The doctor pinpointed that Saturday as the date of conception.
What he couldn’t know was that there were weeks of that Saturday.
So maybe it was one of the rare, small-percentage-of-a-chance pregnancies warned about on contraception packaging and he was wrong about the date of conception. Or maybe it was something a little more.
Austin sure believed it was.
The other surprise about Audra was how unbelievably happy it made them both to find out she was coming.
Didion was certain she’d never have children—had been starting to doubt she’d even have a long-term relationship.
And then suddenly she was pregnant and it was so obviously the rightest thing to ever have happened to her.
Well. Maybe neck and neck with giving Austin that last chance.
Austin accepted a job as a coach in—of all places—Brooklyn, and for the next few years, Didion rediscovered the city and fell in love with it for the first time.
As she did, she took some time off and developed a recipe book of Babe’s food as she slowly worked her way through that green journal.
At first, the recipe book was just for them.
Then maybe for the folks on Mercy Island.
But then Matt convinced her to send it to a friend of his who worked in publishing, and the next thing she knew …
it was a cookbook. A Family Meal by Didion & Babe Bennett.
It wasn’t a phenomenon or anything—noncelebrity cookbooks rarely are these days—but the book and its story of a daughter rediscovering her mother’s recipes reached the right people.
Lots of the right people, the pink book in enough places to be considered a real success.
Though Didion, truly, would have thought it was if it had stayed in the plastic-bound version she gave to her sister for Christmas.
“How do I look?”
They turn to see Matt, and both laugh before they can find their manners. He’s dressed as Batman, as requested by his Catwoman daughter. He has just returned from his adventure out into Mercy’s wilderness to retrieve beer and wine. They have plenty of candy, but forgot about themselves.
Birdie, in her signature, but now very in-theme bandana, comes running down the stairs with Migla at her heels, and the two animals run outside onto the porch, completely part of their own plot.
“Have you told him?” asks Matt. “Or did I let the Catwoman out of the bag?”
Didion squints at him. “You totally know I didn’t tell him yet.”
“I know, but I want to talk about it!”
Didion turns to Austin. “We got the restaurant. All the permits, everything.”
Austin drops his chin to his chest. “Are you serious?”
Didion nods.
Austin’s face splits into a smile and he picks Didion up off the ground and spins her around.
“Did you tell him?” Sammie squeals and tries to jump up, but falls back against the couch. “I’m excited! You just can’t tell because I’m a beached whale!”
“Did everyone else know?” asks Austin.
“Kind of,” Didion admits.
Harrison comes back in, saying, “And don’t worry, my guys will be there to help you out the whole time.”
Didion tilts her head at him. “Harrison, you have your hands full.”
“Equal priority!” he insists, taking a beer out of the case Matt has returned with.
Since Babe’s funeral, Birdsong has been the sanctuary it was always meant to be.
Sammie and Matt stayed while they figured out their next steps.
Sammie’s next steps being travel—for the first time in her life, with enough money to actually do it—and Matt’s were getting a job at a nonprofit in Savannah (and taking a major pay cut to which he was not adjusting very well, though after a recent promotion, he is getting closer to his usual standard of living).
Sammie fell in love with Harrison over the course of a long year.
He didn’t mind. He’d waited long enough for her.
Eventually, he started joining her on her trips abroad.
And a couple of years ago, she’d come back to Birdsong and gotten herself a job as a kindergarten teacher at Mercy Montessori. She loved it.
Last Christmas, Harrison had surprised her with the news that he’d bought a property on the other side of Mercy, near the marshes and the athletic club.
An old fixer-upper that Harrison and his hardware-store team have already made more charming than Sammie ever could have dreamed of.
He was building her dreamhouse. And now it was almost ready to move into.
Which left Birdsong.
To the delight of all, Didion and Austin had made the decision to move in themselves. To start a life there. Their time in the city had been wonderful, but they missed their friends. They wanted Audra to be with Nora and Matt and Sammie, and to grow up with her cousin.
The one who was about to make his entrance.
“Uh—guys?”
Everyone turns to Sammie. “I think— See, I thought I— Long story short, my water broke I think?”
Didion turns off the stove completely and looks at her husband, who says, “Told ya.”
Taylor Rae stays behind at the house to give out candy and to get ahold of Harrison, who has just taken the girls trick-or-treating. Sammie, Austin, Didion, and Matt dash out the front door—almost knocking over the pink coffin full of candy—and load into the Bronco.
The girls sit in the back, Didion holding her sister’s hand.
“Is it horrible? I don’t think I can do it,” says Sammie, her words strained.
“It is, it sucks,” confesses Didion. “But you can do it.”
Sammie, looking somehow more adorable than ever in her blue princess costume, nods back. “I can’t believe I’m about to have a baby.”
Didion looks into her eyes and then up front. Matt is up there, going through Sammie’s go bag, double-checking for the thousandth time. And Austin, who is driving her mother’s old car. Her heart still flips every time she sees him and remembers he’s hers. That she’s his.
“Turn it up, turn it up, I need to drown out my own thoughts,” says Sammie when a Dinah Washington song comes on the radio. She squeezes her sister’s hand.
Didion laughs when she realizes what song it is. And how right the lyrics are. This beautiful life that was unimaginable five years ago before a long weekend changed everything.
Yes, Dinah. What a difference a day makes.